Re: [school-discuss] EduML/EML/ and others

[Matt Jezorek <matt@bluelinux.org>]

> However, I would think that the demands of a Gradebook are quite well taken
> care of by a normal SQL database. Some fields of records could be encoded
> in XML, but generally it takes someone with talent to do this. One can
> easily do the import/export into/from the database.
> 

When I mentioned gradebook it was mostly an example. But here is what I am 
looking at XML to do, XML will not be the database so to say, You will 
still run MySQL,Postgres, or some form of database with these 
applications. Where we need the XML schema is to share the data between 
applications, schools, offices, and other locations. Here is why, 

Les you build a gradebook, I build a lesson plan application. Your grade 
book can not export to XML only share the database, I look at your 
gradebook code and decide okay well I would like to have a reference to 
student grades on each lesson plan (to see if it was sucessful, see if the 
lesson plan got the point across or what ever the reason may be) I write 
the code to hook into your database. You are on release 1.0 I am on 
release 1.0. You are working on some new features and bam you change the 
db schema, now it can break my code because I am sharing the Database not 
just the data (is this collaboration, is this working together) Maybe I am 
also suggesting a API (in several languages) that will create hooks in 
applications to allow other app's to hook in to each other to allow 
exporting of data, I dont exactly know right now. 

Also there comes this, a simple grade book application is written, It is 
a web application. Now many schools might not be able to use this because 
of resources, You cant expect one teacher to install mysql, apache, php 
and everything on the pc they use, so they might not be able to use the 
application. This is a case where a client side application should 
be/could be built and you dont need a database, If its a client 
application then XML will do just fine for local file storage. Not only 
that lets say you have a web application and I come along and build a 
client application that writes XML files that can then be exported into 
the web application. This takes away the need for an internet connection 
other then a small dial up connection to export the data to the web/main 
server. There are many uses for XML and an XML standard in education. The 
problem is do people want to realize this. 

I am also pretty sure that an abstract or draft is written on most 
standards before a lot of code is written.

These are just my feeling's and no one has to agree with them

-- 
Matt Jezorek 
Executive Director / Founder 
Blue Linux Group, Inc 
http://www.bluelinux.org 
matt@bluelinux.org 

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